Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with a
Speaker 1: classic episode. This is the first of a two part
Speaker 1: series Famous Lost Tombs.
Speaker 2: Do you guys remember this one?
Speaker 3: Ah?
Speaker 4: Yes, I could we forget the famous lost tomb of Djengis.
Speaker 3: Khan and those other guys.
Speaker 1: And those several other people, so many that this is
Speaker 1: a two part episode. I think we're all a little
Speaker 1: fuzzy on the exact details here, so we'll be exploring
Speaker 1: it along with you. I can't wait to hear what
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
Speaker 3: name is Nolan.
Speaker 2: They call me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined with our returning guest super producer, Casey
Speaker 1: the Khan pegro Kh a n Yes, very important. Also,
Speaker 1: most importantly, you are you. You are here that makes
Speaker 1: this stuff they don't want you to know. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is a bit of a rabbit hole for us. I
Speaker 1: mean every episode's a bit of a rabbit hole for
Speaker 1: everyone involved. But we have a little bit of backstory
Speaker 1: here in a previous episode of this show, we explored
Speaker 1: this strange, ongoing and likely doomed quest to find the
Speaker 1: grave of Jengis Khan, and we also discovered that as
Speaker 1: the correct pronunciation.
Speaker 3: Yes, Genghis Khan is now Jengis Khan, like like Djenga,
Speaker 3: like the game No No, No, that's Carl Tart.
Speaker 1: And along the way, we learned that not only is
Speaker 1: it's nearly impossible for anyone to find the cons actual
Speaker 1: resting place, not only is it maybe possible that people
Speaker 1: know where it is and will never share that information,
Speaker 1: but we learned a lesson that Matt, you and I
Speaker 1: learned years and years ago when we looked at lost civilizations,
Speaker 1: and that is that this species on the whole is
Speaker 1: just terrible at holding on to or remembering anything. We've
Speaker 1: lost the location of tons of other immensely important historical figures.
Speaker 1: And sure, sometimes that's through honest, boneheaded mistakes, moments of
Speaker 1: instability and confusion as empires rise and fall, and in
Speaker 1: some other cases it's on purpose, it's through purposeful obscucation.
Speaker 1: But before we explore all the famous, incredibly crucial historical
Speaker 1: figures who have disappeared from the modern day, we have to.
Speaker 1: We have to admit that there's some deceptive number play
Speaker 1: at work here. When you think about it, folks, most
Speaker 1: people's tombs are lost. Over ninety percent of people's tombs
Speaker 1: are lost in the big picture. But what do we
Speaker 1: mean when we say that here are the facts.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a combination of quite a few different factors.
Speaker 4: But overall there are two really important things that really
Speaker 4: are stick in the craw of your Laura Crofts of
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: First, tombs were expensive, and honestly that's not any different today.
Speaker 4: If you want like a fancy burial or some kind
Speaker 4: of mausoleum or a plot. You know, land is scarce,
Speaker 4: lots of people die. You know, it's quite an expense
Speaker 4: unless you just want to let go the cheap route.
Speaker 4: And even then you got to pay for a damn arn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, funerals are a racket in this I can't recall
Speaker 1: whether we've done an episode on this yet, but funerals
Speaker 1: are very much a racket, at least in the West.
Speaker 4: And you know, if your family is in the funereal business,
Speaker 4: I know there's the whole notion that it is a comfort,
Speaker 4: it is a service you are providing. That's one way
Speaker 4: to look at it, but there is absolutely money to
Speaker 4: be made, and people are often kind of swindled into
Speaker 4: overpaying four things in memory of their loved one or
Speaker 4: as some kind of tribute to them when I don't know.
Speaker 3: It's it's the old Brenees thing that we talked about
Speaker 3: in episode one. Guys create the need, well, yeah, create
Speaker 3: the need and then don't be swayed. As the consumer
Speaker 3: or the person going through some kind of traumatic emotional thing,
Speaker 3: you can't be swayed by those pleas to your emotion.
Speaker 4: So a point being this remains true today, but throughout
Speaker 4: the course of history, the vast majority of people were
Speaker 4: buried in much more modest structures, or in some cases
Speaker 4: the body was just burned. That was back when you
Speaker 4: could burn your own loved ones. Now you can't do
Speaker 4: that anymore.
Speaker 2: I mean you can't get hot. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair, man.
Speaker 3: Geez, that smell really gives it away.
Speaker 1: Or there were things like sky burial, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, where the funereal process becomes more important than
Speaker 1: the physical resting site.
Speaker 4: Isn't that kind of coming back. Isn't there such a
Speaker 4: thing as like green burials or modern sky burials.
Speaker 1: I don't know about modern sky burials, but green burials
Speaker 1: are definitely huge. And in our home state of Georgia
Speaker 1: here in the US, there is a nearby Catholic monastery
Speaker 1: that practice that's one of the only two places I
Speaker 1: believe in the United States that practices green burial. And
Speaker 1: that's a good observation to know, because with green burial,
Speaker 1: the idea is that ultimately everything involved in the burial,
Speaker 1: from the box, to the wrappings around the corpse, to
Speaker 1: the corpse itself will just become part of the.
Speaker 4: Soil, leave no trace, no gravesite left behind.
Speaker 1: And that's how many many people ended their lives, right.
Speaker 1: They were maybe in some cultures, thrown into the sea,
Speaker 1: were in some unfortunate places.
Speaker 2: People just rotted where they fell, that's right.
Speaker 4: And as we said a minute ago, there's also the
Speaker 4: issue of scarcity of burial sites because there are just
Speaker 4: so many people.
Speaker 1: There are so many people, especially if we look over
Speaker 1: the long term. All right, let's do something very cheerful
Speaker 1: and dive into some of the death statistics, the statistics
Speaker 1: of morbidity or fatalities. We were able to find, in
Speaker 1: a very rough way, the number of people who have
Speaker 1: died ever, Like, not from nineteen fifty on, not from
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy, whatever on.
Speaker 3: But it's up until twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: It's up until twenty fifteen. But I messed with the
Speaker 1: math a little, oh okay, got it to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 3: Oh awesome.
Speaker 1: So, according to the Population Research Bureau, modern Homo sapiens,
Speaker 1: meaning people who were more or less like all of
Speaker 1: us listening now, are this hot, new fangled Homo sapien
Speaker 1: stick to the earth about fifty thousand years ago, and
Speaker 1: since then, more than one hundred and eight billion members
Speaker 1: of our species have been born. That's a rough number
Speaker 1: because again, we have virtually no demographic data for ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent of the span of human existence. Forty nine
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, people weren't like, hey, let's get the
Speaker 1: tribe together and figure out everybody's average age, interest and
Speaker 1: preference for you know, type of food, type of leisure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they weren't so much into analytics back then.
Speaker 2: Surprisingly not these days.
Speaker 3: We can't get enough of them, correct, but we did.
Speaker 3: We did find a pretty accurate number, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Man.
Speaker 1: If we do a little simple math, we can find
Speaker 1: some astonishing things so let's take a fairly accurate number
Speaker 1: of people living on the planet today. That's seven point
Speaker 1: seven billion. Again very rough, because longtime listeners, if you
Speaker 1: remember an Earth earlier episode, Matt, you actually pulled up
Speaker 1: the world population clock and we looked at how many
Speaker 1: people were born and died just in the forty five
Speaker 1: minutes that we spent doing the episode.
Speaker 3: I can't remember the exact number, but it was somewhere
Speaker 3: around ten thousand that were added while we recorded the other.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, that's true, that's true. So welcome if you're listening.
Speaker 1: So all we have to do is a little bit
Speaker 1: of subtraction. Take that seven point seven billion away from
Speaker 1: the one hundred and eight billion who have ever been born,
Speaker 1: and we arrive at this.
Speaker 3: Number around one hundred billion, three hundred million human beings
Speaker 3: that have died on this.
Speaker 1: Planet overall, just on the in the course of this
Speaker 1: ugly brutal thing called human life on Earth. And so
Speaker 1: with this in mind, we can we can easily see
Speaker 1: that we don't know where all one hundred billion, three
Speaker 1: hundred million graves are, right, and many, many, many many
Speaker 1: of those people didn't get a grave at all, you know,
Speaker 1: like you said, no many were probably burned or disposed
Speaker 1: of according to the cultural values or moray's of the time.
Speaker 1: And when we think about this, it means it's reasonable
Speaker 1: to assume that many people got lost in the historical shuffle.
Speaker 1: As we said, empires rise, they changed names, the rulers
Speaker 1: change families, names of cities change. It's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
Speaker 1: And that's nobody's business, but it's sort of everybody's, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And not for nothing did Shelley write the poem Osymandias,
Speaker 1: which is great?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, look on my works, ye mighty, and disperse
Speaker 3: all of this sand, look at it.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's a poem that I hope is familiar
Speaker 1: with a lot of people. It's quoted to great effect
Speaker 1: in the Ballad of Buster Scrut recently debuting on Netflix.
Speaker 4: Oh, in the Super Bummer episode right, Super Bummer vignette.
Speaker 2: But the guy does a great excerpt of it, he
Speaker 2: really does. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I say this every time we bring up Ozzy Mandius.
Speaker 3: It was my grandfather's favorite poem, and he would recite
Speaker 3: it all the time because he was beautifully obsessed with
Speaker 3: his own mortality, and he would just constantly talk about
Speaker 3: Ozzy Mandias.
Speaker 4: Were you ever like grandpa? You're kind of freaking me out.
Speaker 3: No, it was this, I don't know. It was a
Speaker 3: really charming thing about him in a weird way.
Speaker 2: Did he have a good voice for it?
Speaker 3: Oh he did.
Speaker 4: My grandpa just drank and grunted.
Speaker 1: Well, perhaps he was reciting something.
Speaker 4: Too in his head was happening. He didn't share it
Speaker 4: with me.
Speaker 1: So so we know that. Unfortunately, we're never going to
Speaker 1: find the resting place of most people on the planet.
Speaker 1: That's that's just the way things have shaken out for
Speaker 1: us so far. But what about the people who were
Speaker 1: a big deal? This is interesting what you're saying, Matt,
Speaker 1: about your grandfather having this fascinating obsession with his own mortality.
Speaker 1: Because virtually every culture in our history, in one way
Speaker 1: or another, venerates the dead. Death is up there with
Speaker 1: birth one of the huge inexplicable things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Tons of people personally believe that they know or have
Speaker 1: an inkling of what happens, right, and some people agree
Speaker 1: and many people don't. But no one has come up
Speaker 1: with something that everyone can get on board with, right,
Speaker 1: So it's this mystery, and we do our best to
Speaker 1: honor or remember our loved ones, or in some cases
Speaker 1: and some gory cases, to vilify the people we despise.
Speaker 1: And each year hundreds of millions of people make pilgrimages
Speaker 1: to one resting place or another. It could be like
Speaker 1: Jim Morrison's grave in Europe, right, it could be. It
Speaker 1: could be a resting place of lenin you know.
Speaker 3: Or yeah, And it's usually a famous or powerful person,
Speaker 3: or a famously powerful person, yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, or a powerfully famous person. So it seems reasonable
Speaker 1: then that, since since our species pays so much attention
Speaker 1: to this, it seems reasonable to assume that we can
Speaker 1: at least keep track of, if not everybody, the most
Speaker 1: important people who ever lived.
Speaker 4: Right, you'd think, of course, Nah, it turns out no, okay.
Speaker 3: End of show, Well credits.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you why this is the case after a
Speaker 1: word from our sponsors.
Speaker 2: Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: Not even counting the normal people like you and I,
Speaker 1: like everybody who's ever.
Speaker 3: Lived, the over one hundred billion normal people.
Speaker 1: Right right, we have lost tons and tons and tons
Speaker 1: of incredibly influential historical figures over the ages. We can
Speaker 1: divvy it up into a couple of rough categories. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: we do not have the wherewithal to go into every
Speaker 1: single famous person who has disappeared or been hidden from history,
Speaker 1: but we can touch on some interesting stories that are
Speaker 1: not Jengis Khan. We've got stories of misplaced corpses, stories
Speaker 1: of rumored burial sites, and these are old, old rumors too,
Speaker 1: as we'll find. And then we also have stories of
Speaker 1: people who were purposely buried in secret.
Speaker 3: So let's get let's get it started with all. Alexander
Speaker 3: the Great, let's get it started in here. Yep, Alexander
Speaker 3: the third of Macedon, Is that correct? Great?
Speaker 4: Is that is a different way of saying Macedonia.
Speaker 3: It became Messay's age Masadon. It was one of the
Speaker 3: world's This this gentleman was one of the world's greatest
Speaker 3: military minds. We've probably heard of him just from classes
Speaker 3: way way back in the day. Maybe you're in one
Speaker 3: right now listening to this. If so, shame on you
Speaker 3: put your phone away.
Speaker 4: Confused with our amazing cohort alex the Great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, correct, But in this gentleman Alexander the Third's short life,
Speaker 3: he established the largest empire the ancient world had ever
Speaker 3: seen up to that point, and it lasted that way
Speaker 3: for a while it was the Great Empire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so weird when you read about these people.
Speaker 1: His his moniker is not ironic. He was Alexander the Great.
Speaker 1: It was not like a little John name. And I
Speaker 1: think about conquerors like this every time I do something
Speaker 1: really dumb, like this guy was died in his thirties,
Speaker 1: took over most of the known world at the time,
Speaker 1: and two weeks ago I fell asleep trying to put
Speaker 1: on a pair of pants.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. It makes you think, it.
Speaker 3: Really really does.
Speaker 4: I just recently learned, you know how much I love
Speaker 4: acronym's goat Greatest of all time. Yeah, so he could
Speaker 4: have been alex He's the original goat. Alexander the Goat.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm gonna call him.
Speaker 3: This is it, This is it. Well, here's the thing.
Speaker 3: Alexander the Great was just a regular old guy doing
Speaker 3: all this conquering with his giant armies, you know, his
Speaker 3: numerous giant armies that roamed the planet.
Speaker 1: Died feeling like a failure. Yeah, even though he did
Speaker 1: name a city after himself.
Speaker 4: Just goes to show, just goes to show. We all
Speaker 4: have imposter syndrome. All of us. No matter what you know,
Speaker 4: no matter how much you achieve, how much you conquer,
Speaker 4: it's never enough unless you get right with yourself and
Speaker 4: love yourself.
Speaker 1: And so far everybody has died no matter what they do.
Speaker 1: It turns out life is a terminal condition.
Speaker 3: Except for that one guy. You remember that's a different
Speaker 3: years ago or so. You remember we're talking about spatist
Speaker 3: one guy. I can't remember his name, all right, So
Speaker 3: oh and Henrietta lax Ah, there you go. Immortality via
Speaker 3: cancer cells. Okay, So here's here's one of the big things.
Speaker 3: It's not exactly known, or at least as debated, how
Speaker 3: he died, but it is known when he died.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, yeah, three twenty three BCE and Babylon. But
Speaker 1: but you're raising an interesting point, Matt. We don't know
Speaker 1: too much about how we died. Was it malaria, was
Speaker 1: it poisoning? Was it West Nile virus. There's a somewhat idealized,
Speaker 1: romanticized account that says he died of heartbreak.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, that's not a thing.
Speaker 2: People have died of heartbreak.
Speaker 4: They need to suck it up, and you know, start
Speaker 4: going to the gym.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got all this advice for these ancient people, they.
Speaker 1: Really do in this time, in this time in human civilization,
Speaker 1: just surviving was like being at the gym all the time.
Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying, though, Like, you know, with everything
Speaker 4: that was getting thrown at you, how are you gonna
Speaker 4: die of a broken heart? That just sounds like giving
Speaker 4: up to me.
Speaker 2: That's surprisingly cold.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 4: Hey, listen, I've been through the ringer this year, okay,
Speaker 4: last year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I see, I see what You're.
Speaker 4: Come out the other side though, hear knew me.
Speaker 1: What's that quote, be kind for everyone is facing I'll
Speaker 1: do it again, be kind for everyone is facing a
Speaker 1: great battle. It's one of Chuck Bryant's favorite quotes.
Speaker 2: Actually, that's a good point.
Speaker 4: It's also one of those things about being It's like
Speaker 4: you could rephrase that to be nice to the person
Speaker 4: everyone you meet, because they could be dealing with something
Speaker 4: that you do not know.
Speaker 3: About, yeah, or you know the golden rule, Just treat
Speaker 3: them like you want to be treated.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So what happens?
Speaker 1: So okay, So there's this idea debatable probably not true,
Speaker 1: that he died of good old fashioned grief over the
Speaker 1: death of his best friend ifestion.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I heard via the internet that the
Speaker 3: h is silent, but I know Hefestianfestian expert.
Speaker 1: So what happens though, like I, regardless of how he dies,
Speaker 1: he dies around three twenty b CE.
Speaker 2: So what happens after that, Well.
Speaker 3: I mean his corpse. He's the guy that conquered most
Speaker 3: of the world, at least in the known world, as
Speaker 3: we said, and his body is going to be venerated
Speaker 3: in some way in probably some you know, grandiose fashion.
Speaker 3: That's just what's going to happen. No matter what. His
Speaker 3: body's going to be an artifact for what comes after
Speaker 3: him now that the leader is dead, because there's going
Speaker 3: to be a power struggle, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because in this case, his body becomes
Speaker 1: a symbol. In some ways, possessing his body gives an
Speaker 1: implicit endorsement of your right to rule.
Speaker 3: Almost like oh that is so strange treat it almost
Speaker 3: has an air in a way, or being an heir
Speaker 3: to it because you have it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, possession being nine tenths of the law, and
Speaker 1: so on.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: So first his body's mummified and for two years it
Speaker 1: lay in state in a golden sarcophagus, and eventually the
Speaker 1: people were fighting about where he should be placed, where
Speaker 1: he should be buried, make a decision, and they decide
Speaker 1: to bury him in Greece, in the first capital of
Speaker 1: the Macedonian kings, whoa in.
Speaker 3: A place called Egay. And I again the Internet says
Speaker 3: I should pronounce it that way. It's spelled ae Gae.
Speaker 3: We're just going with it.
Speaker 2: But the plan goes arise, isn't that correct? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah? According to ancient sources, his his hearse that was
Speaker 3: actually you know, his body was traveling in was hijacked
Speaker 3: of all things near Damascus, and his corpse was taken
Speaker 3: to Egypt, and it was first I guess it was
Speaker 3: first taken to Memphis in Egypt, not the home of
Speaker 3: the other king.
Speaker 2: Right away before Elvis.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then from there things start to get fuzzy. Sometime
Speaker 1: between two ninety eight and two eighty three BCE, his
Speaker 1: body is taken to Alexandria, the city we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: that he founded and named after himself, and then from
Speaker 1: there he gets disinterred and put in at least two
Speaker 1: other places, the most famous being a mausolem called the Soma.
Speaker 4: The Soma which I believe is a isn't that an
Speaker 4: herb that kind of makes you sleepy? And I think
Speaker 4: there's a antipsychotic medication called Soma, or at least it's
Speaker 4: some kind of Valium esque type drug.
Speaker 1: It's a drug in Brave New World by Aldus Huxley.
Speaker 4: That's exactly what I was thinking. Maybe it's not even real.
Speaker 4: I wonder if the real drug was named after the
Speaker 4: drug in Huxley, Because there really is a drug called Soma.
Speaker 3: I think the real drug is a muscle relaxer. I
Speaker 3: think you want to say, I've been prescribed it before
Speaker 3: but didn't take it. It's also it's also a wonderful,
Speaker 3: wonderful I like. I like using this word for this
Speaker 3: horror game, like a psychological horror game.
Speaker 4: It's also a quite good Smashing Pumpkins song from before
Speaker 4: Billy Corgan lost his damn mind.
Speaker 2: Is a brand name of a real drug.
Speaker 3: It's Kara Sofra Doll. That's the one that is the
Speaker 3: one to.
Speaker 4: All that aside drugs, Smashing Pumpkins, imaginary drugs. This is
Speaker 4: where in this mausoleum, the Soma the looting began, as
Speaker 4: is wont to happen with graves. It's basically like a
Speaker 4: big old target in the ground saying hey, free stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 4: if you want to get your hands dirty and possibly
Speaker 4: your soul.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, and you know, Alexander found himself or his body
Speaker 3: at least inside a giant golden sarcophagus. I believe we
Speaker 3: mentioned very inconspicuous. Yeah, and what do you do when
Speaker 3: you have a giant thing made out of gold? You
Speaker 3: melt it down, of course you do. And that happened,
Speaker 3: but it got replaced with like a glass sarcophagus, or
Speaker 3: at least a glass container or some kind of crystalline container,
Speaker 3: which is fascinating to me. I really would have liked
Speaker 3: to have seen that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's strange because you have to wonder did
Speaker 1: they decide did they decide that gold, being you know,
Speaker 1: a currency at times today, is decide that was just
Speaker 1: asking for trouble to make another golden thing, and they decided, well,
Speaker 1: glass is nice, and glass and crystal are expensive, but
Speaker 1: no one will steal it to try to pay for things.
Speaker 3: That I mean, that makes a lot of sense. And also,
Speaker 3: you know, whoever is running the show now, you need
Speaker 3: a lot of gold and money to pay for all
Speaker 3: the war that you're waging, right, because we're empire building
Speaker 3: here people. Yeah, I mean it's not cheap.
Speaker 2: It's game on.
Speaker 1: Even Cleopatra, who don't worry, shows up later in this story,
Speaker 1: took gold from this tomb to pay for her war
Speaker 1: against Octavian. There you go, and the things continued to
Speaker 1: get worse, which is kind of the story of humanity.
Speaker 4: Oh man, no question about it. In three sixty CE,
Speaker 4: there were a series of unfortunate events that included warfare, rioting,
Speaker 4: an earthquake, a tsunami. All of this threatened or possibly
Speaker 4: even destroyed the tomb. By the time Saint John Chrysostom
Speaker 4: visited in four hundred CE, the tomb was lost, and
Speaker 4: ever since then no one has been able to find
Speaker 4: the resting place of one of history's greatest conquerors.
Speaker 3: And Alexander the Great rip is just out there somewhere.
Speaker 3: His remains exist because it takes a long time for
Speaker 3: bones in the human body to break down.
Speaker 1: Yep, it's there, So traces of him may well be
Speaker 1: somewhere in some form, right, but he is now Also,
Speaker 1: it's fair to call him Alexander the Lost. Searches continue
Speaker 1: for his remains or his tomb to date, but no
Speaker 1: one has found it. One thing we can say, and
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound too cynical about this, is
Speaker 1: that this this makes a lot of careers. The search
Speaker 1: for these sorts of lost sites can literally change the
Speaker 1: course of human history. And so as we're speaking, if
Speaker 1: you're an archaeologist or a budding archaeologist researching this or
Speaker 1: something like this, we want to hear from you. Let
Speaker 1: us know what your search, your particular search is, and
Speaker 1: let us know what you think your fellow listeners would
Speaker 1: be surprised to learn about it. In the meantime, let's
Speaker 1: fast forward.
Speaker 3: I just right here before we get into it. I
Speaker 3: watched a movie with my wife last night, and I
Speaker 3: couldn't tell you the name of it right now. It
Speaker 3: just showed up on one of the streaming sites and
Speaker 3: she had wanted to see it. It's all about this
Speaker 3: woman who goes back to college with her daughter to
Speaker 3: become an archaeologist, and I just happened. I had no
Speaker 3: idea that that was the plot.
Speaker 4: Is it a heartwarming rom com it?
Speaker 3: I guess it's kind of bad, but.
Speaker 2: It is a psychological thriller. No.
Speaker 3: I couldn't even tell you who's in it or what
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: Not bird Bucks. Oh, I can't believe. I can't even
Speaker 3: think of it right now.
Speaker 2: Is it police Academy for that's what it was?
Speaker 3: Okay, anyway, it just happened to have an archaeologist archaeology
Speaker 3: B plot line that may be very happy nice.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. I have a subscription to Archaeology Magazine. Well, okay, look,
Speaker 1: I mind it for possible episodes in the future. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be honest.
Speaker 4: I inexplicably have a subscription to Maxim. It just started coming.
Speaker 4: I can't get it to stop.
Speaker 1: I think that's something that happens in the magazine industry
Speaker 1: that I'd love to look into, because I had a
Speaker 1: former girlfriend who inexplicably began receiving a subscribe to Moohair magazine,
Speaker 1: and Moohair Magazine is a lifestyle fashion interest thing for
Speaker 1: the Latino population in the US North America, I guess.
Speaker 1: And we couldn't get them to stop sending it. Like
Speaker 1: I emailed them. I sent an actual letter and they
Speaker 1: still kept sending Moohair.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, you know, the my ex
Speaker 1: and I are on good terms, so I could probably
Speaker 1: write to her and ask her she might still be
Speaker 1: getting mouhair like they locked it down.
Speaker 2: There was no way out there.
Speaker 4: It's like she's moved three times, still follows her wherever
Speaker 4: she goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we have that with Rolling Stone. Somehow my wife
Speaker 3: still gets Rolling Stone sent to our house. We have
Speaker 3: not paid for that. I don't even know how long
Speaker 3: we should look into this. This is actually I think
Speaker 3: we might have just uncovered a new conspiracy. Is it
Speaker 3: worth sending us these magazines for the advertising that we
Speaker 3: are potentially looking at.
Speaker 4: That just just to just claim circulation, right, just to
Speaker 4: boost That's fine, I'm fine.
Speaker 2: I love magazines.
Speaker 1: I canceled a lot of subscriptions because we receive them
Speaker 1: here at work and I read a ton of them.
Speaker 1: But uh but anyway, yeah, but anyway that that may
Speaker 1: well be a future episode. Tell us about the magazine
Speaker 1: subscriptions that you are non consensually receiving, please, and and
Speaker 1: we'll hatch this conspiracy with you if you need it.
Speaker 1: It's a bit unethical, but if you have a subscription
Speaker 1: that you want people to think you are non consensually receiving,
Speaker 1: right to us, and we will totally pretend that you
Speaker 1: are non consentually receiving it beautiful? Someone's like, no, I
Speaker 1: hate a Horseback monthly.
Speaker 2: So it's there's so many weird magazines. Yeah, gosh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: we're going to do an episode on that.
Speaker 3: Let's let's let's definitely do that. And let's also jump
Speaker 3: forward to a really cool figure in history, mister Thomas Paine.
Speaker 1: Yes, let's bring the pain, Matt. What's what's the gist
Speaker 1: about this guy?
Speaker 3: Well, he's an He's an Englishman, an England born political philosopher.
Speaker 3: He's a writer. You certainly have heard about him. He
Speaker 3: supported the revolutionary causes in both America and in Europe.
Speaker 3: He's perhaps best known for the old seventeen seventy six
Speaker 3: essay Common Sense, along with other works such as The
Speaker 3: American Crisis, Rights of Man and the Age of Reason,
Speaker 3: which is a really great read actually, and I didn't
Speaker 3: expect it to be when I cracked that thing open.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very readable.
Speaker 1: It's strange because I think we sometimes have a stereotype
Speaker 1: about things written in English in that period of time,
Speaker 1: where they're going to be dry, and every sentence is
Speaker 1: going to be three paragraphs long.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you're not going to understand most of it.
Speaker 4: Largely responsible for the philosophy behind enlightenment thinking and also
Speaker 4: our monument buddies, the Georgia guidestones.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 4: Pain in flies on those guys huge.
Speaker 3: They were huge and up pain that is a weird
Speaker 3: mixed accent. And again, my grandfather. The reason why I
Speaker 3: read it is because my grandfather, old Papa, brought it,
Speaker 3: brought it to my attention.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a good read, you know, And I
Speaker 1: know I know these the idea. There are certain trigger
Speaker 1: words people here that make them not want to read things.
Speaker 1: One of those is essay ye. The other is you know,
Speaker 1: I think reason or rights. But he was writing to
Speaker 1: communicate with the common people, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: He wasn't trying to do fancy acts of rhetorical gymnastics
Speaker 1: or acrobatics. But eventually, despite all the great things that
Speaker 1: he did, he also spoiler alert died.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I was hoping it was going to go
Speaker 3: the other way.
Speaker 1: He's outside of the studio right now, Matt waiting to
Speaker 1: talk to him.
Speaker 3: I only wish.
Speaker 2: About his multi level marketing scheme.
Speaker 3: Oh god, it's kind of a good news bad news
Speaker 3: es Central oils again Pain. So he died on June eighth,
Speaker 3: eighteen nine, in New York City, and today he is
Speaker 3: the only founding father that does not have an official
Speaker 3: gravesite that you can go and visit. There Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: I'm so surprised.
Speaker 3: Why, let's talk about what happened.
Speaker 4: Let's so, he was first buried in New Rochelle, New York,
Speaker 4: on his farm after the Quakers refused him, in a
Speaker 4: town that was very, very hostile towards this man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because he criticized the Quakers during his lifetime for
Speaker 1: their pacifism and for some of their other political beliefs.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: And in eighteen nineteen, a pain admirer named William Cobbett,
Speaker 4: himself a Democrat, a Democratic advocate rather from England, saw
Speaker 4: the disrespect that Paine received where he was buried and
Speaker 4: decided to dig him up. Took it upon himself to
Speaker 4: dig the man up. Just grabbed a shovel, just grabbed
Speaker 4: a shovel, heartwise, the heart ones, that's true, and to
Speaker 4: take him to England where he would be treated with
Speaker 4: more respect. And he wanted to help spur the movement
Speaker 4: for democracy there. So I guess he saw this as
Speaker 4: sort of a symbolic act.
Speaker 3: Yeah, again, using a dead body for almost for definitely
Speaker 3: a political reason, and.
Speaker 2: Did it work.
Speaker 1: Not really, There's still a monarchy in that area of
Speaker 1: the world. There's a parliament, sure, yeah, a House of
Speaker 1: lords and a House of Commons.
Speaker 2: That should tell you what you need to know.
Speaker 4: Well, here in the States we basically just have two
Speaker 4: houses of lords. So at least I don't I don't know.
Speaker 4: Isn't that kind of the same thing. The representative represented
Speaker 4: the people, which would be the commons, and then the
Speaker 4: senators are more like the lords.
Speaker 1: Interesting, the senators on paper are also supposed to represent
Speaker 1: the people.
Speaker 3: That's fair, haha.
Speaker 1: Psych So, over the years, Pain's body was divided, it
Speaker 1: was split, the bones were circulated across the planet. People
Speaker 1: were making relics of his remains, and now we have
Speaker 1: we don't know where the bones are. We don't know
Speaker 1: where pieces of this guy's body are. There's a Thomas
Speaker 1: Pain foundation that has some of his hair and a
Speaker 1: bit of his brain. They admit to owning that, but
Speaker 1: there were unverified rumors that some of Thomas Pain's bones
Speaker 1: were cut into get this guy's buttons and sold to
Speaker 1: finance the revolution nice, But thing is kind of like
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages when people would unscrupulously sell, you know,
Speaker 1: slivers of the Jesus the cross on which Jesus Christ
Speaker 1: was crucified. There are enough slivers of that stuff to
Speaker 1: make a forest essentially.
Speaker 4: Or it's like those Passion of the Christ necklaces.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, or any and all holy water ever.
Speaker 2: Well, holy water, you can you could just make holy water.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Was it you we were having I was having this
Speaker 1: conversation with somebody about hunting vampires. In vampire films, there's
Speaker 1: almost always a priest, right, yeah, And the priest has
Speaker 1: the ability to bless water, making it holy and therefore
Speaker 1: dangerous for vampires. Why don't they just like bless a
Speaker 1: water treatment system or like a storm or something just
Speaker 1: a well, yeah, how does it work to start getting buckets?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: Anyway, there, there you go, vampire producers, check out our show.
Speaker 3: And now that now that the Universal Life Church of
Speaker 3: California exists, literally all of us have a massive defense
Speaker 3: of it against vampires because we can just get ordained
Speaker 3: with in a few minutes.
Speaker 4: Isn't that where your ordination is from?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, and me as well exactly, it's the only
Speaker 3: one that is not ordained. Yes, we've talked about this.
Speaker 4: Let's get on this train, but I guess I got
Speaker 4: to get on the ordained train.
Speaker 3: Casey is ordained. Look at him, he's in he's in
Speaker 3: three or four different sects that he's a minister for.
Speaker 3: And I think a priest, a priestess, and what was
Speaker 3: the other thing.
Speaker 4: A shaman?
Speaker 3: A mage? He's a mage. What are you making this up?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So.
Speaker 1: Back to this idea of counterfeiting relics very common in
Speaker 1: ancient days and surprisingly common still in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: There were more buttons that were purportedly Thomas Paine's bones
Speaker 1: that were sold than could have come from ten bodies.
Speaker 1: You could build a jam band off the amount of
Speaker 1: buttons sold, well, the skeletons of a jam band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want It makes you wonder who else was
Speaker 3: in that jam band that ended up as a Thomas
Speaker 3: pain button.
Speaker 2: Yes. These were also the days of resurrection, then, weren't they.
Speaker 4: Do you think that any of those are still around
Speaker 4: and they're confirmed to be pain buttons around?
Speaker 2: Yes? Confirmed?
Speaker 1: No, because how could you, well you could there are
Speaker 1: some forms of testing could you to verify it, because
Speaker 1: there are rumors of a leg bone hanging in a
Speaker 1: wall of a tavern in England, and then there are
Speaker 1: other place that would be Thomas Pain rights large enough
Speaker 1: sample where you could try to do some investigatory thing.
Speaker 4: You could probably at least narrow down the timeframe and
Speaker 4: the region.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of what you're saying, right, You could
Speaker 1: do some analyses that would indicate that there are also
Speaker 1: some pieces that were claimed in Europe. It's possible that
Speaker 1: the skull has been located in Wales and then later
Speaker 1: moved to Australia, but to the point no testing has
Speaker 1: confirmed this, and today it seems that Pain's remains are
Speaker 1: largely scattered amidst various grizzly collections and some unscrupulous private collectors.
Speaker 2: There are more of these people than you think. My friends.
Speaker 1: Likely have pieces of Thomas Pain held in a secret
Speaker 1: collection today, sort of the way that a particular secret
Speaker 1: society here in the United States collects skulls that is wow,
Speaker 1: creatively named the Skull and Bones.
Speaker 2: By the way, that's who we're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. Just sitting there, do you think maybe
Speaker 3: they have it?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but you know what, honestly, I would
Speaker 1: not be that surprised if they had.
Speaker 2: A piece of it.
Speaker 3: It would make so much sense. Oh yeah, that's Yale.
Speaker 3: Oh dude, they totally have something in there. Hey. By
Speaker 3: the way, twenty three and Me, if you're listening, just
Speaker 3: whoever you.
Speaker 2: Are, you are, I saw this news.
Speaker 3: Just go ahead and just get on there and just
Speaker 3: start just testing them bones especially, go to the skull
Speaker 3: and bones first.
Speaker 1: Oh then, I thought you were talking about the twenty
Speaker 1: three a Me news that just came out now here
Speaker 1: about what is?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: I super producers, could we get a breaking news sound cue?
Speaker 1: So twenty three and Me has teamed up with a
Speaker 1: drug manufacturer, pharmaceutical giant named.
Speaker 3: Glaxo like Smith Klein.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, Glaxo Smith Clin.
Speaker 1: They're giving the they're giving away the DNA test results
Speaker 1: of the five million something customers of twenty three and Me.
Speaker 1: What Glaxos Smith Clein will use this data to create
Speaker 1: research and create new drugs.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: What called it called? It said it was going to happen.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I gotta tell Jason, our executive producer,
Speaker 3: because he totally just did that.
Speaker 1: Well, go ahead and preemptively thank him for possibly contributing
Speaker 1: to important medical research.
Speaker 4: There you go, there you go against his will. Well,
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, he clicked the terms of service. You know,
Speaker 4: once you do that, it's like you don't know what's
Speaker 4: going to happen.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: That told us, They told us in their offices they
Speaker 3: wouldn't do this.
Speaker 4: So should we take a little break before we get
Speaker 4: to rumored burial places?
Speaker 2: Sounds good. Let's do it.
Speaker 4: And we are back, as Matt would say, with no delay.
Speaker 4: He said it once and I was taken by it.
Speaker 4: I don't know what it means, but I like it
Speaker 4: very much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can hear. This is a very dry track.
Speaker 3: There aren't a lot of effects on it. Definitely no delay.
Speaker 4: Also, it means that we're getting right to it. Rumored
Speaker 4: burial places number one with a bullet on the list.
Speaker 4: The Queen Nephrititi of ancient Egypt. She was a queen
Speaker 4: of Egypt, the wife of the pharaoh Akanatan, who ruled
Speaker 4: in the mid fourteenth century BCE. So before Nefertiti and Akanatan,
Speaker 4: Egypt had been a polytheistic civilization worshiping an entire pantheon
Speaker 4: of anthropomorphic animal deities, ranging from the crocodile god Sobek,
Speaker 4: who was depicted often as a man with the head
Speaker 4: of a crocodile, a staff in one hand and an
Speaker 4: ank that Egyptian symboled a little loop with the cross
Speaker 4: through it in the other, and with a weirdly a
Speaker 4: giant golden temple acting as some sort of larger than
Speaker 4: life crown sitting atop his scaly head. And then you
Speaker 4: had like God's like Anubis, who has depicted the god
Speaker 4: of the Dead, who has depicted very much the same
Speaker 4: way as Sobec, was only with the head of a
Speaker 4: jackal and a last no golden temple headpiece.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love I love the idea of all the
Speaker 3: gods being a person with a different animal head. That
Speaker 3: is really I actually really like that. But here's the thing.
Speaker 4: Akan Natan and his queen thought. This whole worshiping multiple
Speaker 4: animal headed gods was for the literal birds, not not
Speaker 4: to be confused with the ibis headed god of wisdom Thoth,
Speaker 4: which is so fun to say Thoth. It's just I
Speaker 4: got a thch on the front end and a thch
Speaker 4: on the back end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I love that. I really do. Like EBIs
Speaker 3: or what is it, Thoth is the god. I've seen
Speaker 3: that in so many different places. Anyway, the Pharaoh thought
Speaker 3: it would be a good, a better idea at least
Speaker 3: to stick with. Just let's call it one god. This
Speaker 3: will be easier. We can all, you know, know that
Speaker 3: there's one singular force that we can worship. Let's say,
Speaker 3: let's say the Sun, that giant orange thing that just
Speaker 3: shoots light at us all the time and it makes
Speaker 3: us warm and happy. That's a good thing to worship.
Speaker 3: Let's do that seems legit.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that the sun disc also known
Speaker 1: as Attan, had already held a place in ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: religion and the state's way back to the Old Kingdom,
Speaker 1: where it was worshiped as an aspect of the composite
Speaker 1: god Raw A'mun Horus. And this is not to get
Speaker 1: too into the weeds about it, but Raw represents the
Speaker 1: daytime Sun I'mun, the son of the underworld Horus of course,
Speaker 1: the rising Sun.
Speaker 3: I love the idea of a composite god.
Speaker 2: That is so cool to me. It's really common in
Speaker 2: the ancient world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but it's something we don't really think about everything.
Speaker 4: Every god is kind of their own thing. Oh, although
Speaker 4: it is kind of similar to the Trinity, like the Trinity, right.
Speaker 1: The Monotheism. That's they didn't make that up out of
Speaker 1: whole cloth.
Speaker 4: Right, Monotheism being exactly where we're headed.
Speaker 1: Right, So this is this is this is backstory that
Speaker 1: we promise will deliver. So what what happens next? Because
Speaker 1: you have to know this stuff about polytheism and monotheism, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, Akannat and effort TD attempted with all their might
Speaker 4: to obliterate all traces of we're gonna go Game of
Speaker 4: Throne style and call them the old gods by defacing carvings, temples,
Speaker 4: and hieroglyphics that depicted them.
Speaker 3: And you know, this didn't go over so well with
Speaker 3: you know, the general public that had been worshiping these
Speaker 3: gods for so long.
Speaker 4: That's right. And neither did it last particularly long, right, Bem.
Speaker 2: That's right, it did not. It did not.
Speaker 1: It wasn't as unsuccessful as New Coke when that came out,
Speaker 1: but it was still pretty No, it was actually way
Speaker 1: worse than New coke.
Speaker 3: Or crystal pepsi.
Speaker 4: Because I believe that Akinnatin rained for seventeen years, and
Speaker 4: this whole worshiping the Sun god business came in about
Speaker 4: three or four years into his reign, So that's kind
Speaker 4: of a blip in ancient Egyptian history.
Speaker 1: Right, And the people who came after Aka Natan did
Speaker 1: their best to erase him and Nefertiti herself from official history.
Speaker 2: And this is important.
Speaker 1: So we don't talk about this as much as we
Speaker 1: should in the modern day, but it is true that
Speaker 1: the victors write the history textbooks you read, and they
Speaker 1: are the ones who tell the stories of events in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 2: And it is at least back.
Speaker 1: Then, it was alarmingly easy to erase people from history,
Speaker 1: and Stalin did it during his reign. These subsequent pharaohs
Speaker 1: did it as well, and you can see why they
Speaker 1: did it, whether or not you agree with them. It
Speaker 1: is true that this could pose a clear and present
Speaker 1: danger to their own legitimacy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, And Nefertiti went right along with this whole deal,
Speaker 4: because she actually disappeared from the historical record before her
Speaker 4: husband did, about twelve years into his so it's possible
Speaker 4: that she might have died. There was a plague, as
Speaker 4: we know, that swept through Egypt around this time. But
Speaker 4: there are some Egyptologists who believe that she was actually
Speaker 4: elevated to co regent and changed her name therefore kind
Speaker 4: of slipped out of the historical record into a new role.
Speaker 4: And then the name Nefertia disappeared, and she was named
Speaker 4: something that sounded remarkably like Nefertiti. I can't remember exactly
Speaker 4: what it was, but it was sort of a it
Speaker 4: was almost like a permutation of the name Nefertiti. And
Speaker 4: the thing is too, in a lot of the historical record,
Speaker 4: or a lot of the depictions of she and her husband,
Speaker 4: they were very much on the same level. She already
Speaker 4: had a lot of power even before this possible elevation
Speaker 4: to literal coregient like vice president or really I think
Speaker 4: a co regent would be like fifty to fifty co ruler, right, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: so that's one possibility, But there's more. Many archaeologists believe
Speaker 4: that she could have been buried in one of the
Speaker 4: tombs of what's now called Amarna, which there's a new
Speaker 4: capital city that Akanatan built during his reign.
Speaker 1: Whoa, right, Yeah, these tombs were plundered after Akinnaton's death,
Speaker 1: so it is possible that never Titi could have been
Speaker 1: reburied in the Valley of Kings. The thing is, people
Speaker 1: will tell you that, no matter how much animosity there
Speaker 1: was for her and her husband, no pharaoh would normally
Speaker 1: deny a former ruler the burial accorded to their station,
Speaker 1: even somebody that everybody hated, like Acnon.
Speaker 3: And here's something that we I don't think we've even
Speaker 3: mentioned this yet. She had a very important steps on.
Speaker 3: You may know himton Common Tuton Common, Yes, old king
Speaker 3: Tut that we have discussed and before on this show
Speaker 3: about the curse that existed for his tomb.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I think inbreeding was the curse of
Speaker 1: his lifetime. Have you seen the forensic analysis. Also, I
Speaker 1: like to think of him as the originator of the
Speaker 1: phrase tut tut.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 2: I'm a big fan, like I like the single tut
Speaker 2: that you do.
Speaker 4: Ben. You said, that's very tout.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is when something is very touch Yeah, when
Speaker 1: something's touch well.
Speaker 3: And the idea that she had such a famous and
Speaker 3: powerful son in law that perhaps her body was actually
Speaker 3: you know, put in his tomb somewhere.
Speaker 4: That's right. Not to mention the fact that he took
Speaker 4: over after his father in law died, and he is
Speaker 4: also the one that pretty much instantly started the process
Speaker 4: of going back, taking Egypt back to the old polytheistic
Speaker 4: ways and refurbishing all of those desecrated sites and monuments
Speaker 4: and hieroglyphs and all of that business. But yes, you're
Speaker 4: absolutely right this theory that Nephertiiti's body was possibly buried
Speaker 4: in her son in law's tomb. There's one part of
Speaker 4: it that is super interesting, is this idea that that
Speaker 4: tomb may have actually been meant for Neffertiti in the
Speaker 4: first place, but that Tutenkommon died unexpectedly quite young, the
Speaker 4: boy king, right, because one piece of evidence behind this,
Speaker 4: it's all it seems a little conjectury, but it's that
Speaker 4: it was a much smaller tomb than some of the
Speaker 4: other ones, and that if it was for a woman
Speaker 4: they might have considered it diminutive less then, so they
Speaker 4: might have made it smaller. But you could also argue
Speaker 4: that it was for a boy, and that you could
Speaker 4: say the same thing in that respect. But here's the thing.
Speaker 4: This theory was put forth by an Egyptologist named Nicholas Reeve,
Speaker 4: who's the director of the Amarna Royal Tombs Project. He
Speaker 4: commissioned some radar scans of the site of Tuton Common's
Speaker 4: tomb and they supposedly showed evidence of two secret chambers,
Speaker 4: complete with masonry walls and quote, metallic and organic substances.
Speaker 4: But there are other experts who aren't so sure that
Speaker 4: this was definitive of what he wanted it to be.
Speaker 3: Kind of yeah. And then of course, as soon as
Speaker 3: a theory like that comes along, you've got somebody else
Speaker 3: who comes along and says, well, I'm gonna do some scans,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna or we're at least gonna relook at
Speaker 3: the scans that we're done, see what we have here.
Speaker 3: And according to this other group of scientists in this case,
Speaker 3: it's Lawrence Conyers, who's at the University of Denver. He's
Speaker 3: an anthropology professor. By the way, he's looking at these
Speaker 3: scans and he's saying it, quote, it does not appear
Speaker 3: that these GPR ground penetrating radar data have been processed
Speaker 3: or that any of the so called anomalies are visible
Speaker 3: in the raw data that are provided.
Speaker 4: This guy, by the way, I saw this in every
Speaker 4: thing that cited this dude. He wrote the book on
Speaker 4: ground penetrating Radar.
Speaker 3: There you go. It's gonna make a joke about penetrating
Speaker 3: the ground via that old poet laureate of the West.
Speaker 3: But we'll go back to Let's go back to the
Speaker 3: quote he says, My suggestion to those who are collecting
Speaker 3: it is that they release the raw data for some
Speaker 3: peer review by other GPR people before they allow the
Speaker 3: antiquities people to hold a press conference about all the
Speaker 3: riches that might be in these supposed tombs. That peer
Speaker 3: review would cut down all the speculation and critiques that
Speaker 3: have been going on around the email for the last
Speaker 3: few days, as there might be, as there might be
Speaker 3: as many scientists who could reach a consensus in advance
Speaker 3: of the speculation in the press.
Speaker 4: This was in twenty sixteen, By the way, I was
Speaker 4: not able to find any more recent updates to this.
Speaker 4: But in twenty sixteen Egypt's Antiquities ministry refused to follow
Speaker 4: Kanyer's advice or acknowledge another series of scans that were
Speaker 4: carried out by National Geographic Or with their assistance, saying
Speaker 4: they would independently test the site. Instead, Reeve and his
Speaker 4: co author were allowed to present their findings unchallenged within
Speaker 4: the Egyptology community in Egypt. So I don't know. Ben,
Speaker 4: we were talking about this off air. It seems like
Speaker 4: the ministry here is protecting their like what tourism kind
Speaker 4: of booned this could produce. I'm confused as to why
Speaker 4: they would be so secretive or not allow other perspectives
Speaker 4: in this in this discussion.
Speaker 3: Could it be grant money coming in from NGOs or
Speaker 3: some other.
Speaker 1: Thing, or it could be grant money, It could be
Speaker 1: a unsc thing, It could be it could be any
Speaker 1: number of things. We do know that in some cases,
Speaker 1: state organizations like this are incentivized or incentive, depending on
Speaker 1: which word you prefer, to preserve a certain status quo.
Speaker 1: It happens. It happens as well in Central America and Mexico,
Speaker 1: where in some cases some countries don't want a lost
Speaker 1: site to be found because then they are responsible for
Speaker 1: restoring and maintaining it. It also could, and this is
Speaker 1: somewhat depressing, it could just be a matter of corruption.
Speaker 1: They may have just not greased the right palms yet,
Speaker 1: but they did allow him to like they just didn't respond, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, No, I mean they definitely did. It wasn't even
Speaker 4: the father of GPR or whatever. He was just kind
Speaker 4: of weighing in on this, and I think he was
Speaker 4: even quoted at another time saying he was considering going and
Speaker 4: conducting some tests himself, but he's glad he didn't because
Speaker 4: the whole thing seems like a real debacle, and you know,
Speaker 4: didn't want to fly halfway around the world to be
Speaker 4: part of this kind of total ship show.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 1: I know that as of twenty eighteen, professors were still
Speaker 1: fighting over a three D image that was constructed of
Speaker 1: someone who was presented as Neffer TD, a thirty four
Speaker 1: hundred year old mummy that was identified as the younger lady.
Speaker 1: But that was discovered back in eighteen ninety eight and
Speaker 1: then TV producers got a hold of it.
Speaker 2: So oh boy, yeah, so I had drama trusted well.
Speaker 4: Point being is this is still a hotly contested issue,
Speaker 4: and I think the backstory of this whole Neffer td
Speaker 4: Akanatan situation is really interesting and kind of points to
Speaker 4: how history can kind kind of obscure the truth, you know,
Speaker 4: based on ideological disagreements.
Speaker 1: And although you didn't hear it through the magic of editing,
Speaker 1: we just had a break off air ourselves and we
Speaker 1: hope that you are enjoying this episode. Because time got
Speaker 1: a little bit ahead of us. We have more famous tombs,
Speaker 1: but we are going to have to save those for
Speaker 1: another day the second part of what has become a
Speaker 1: two part episode. We will rejoin you next time as
Speaker 1: we stay in Egypt and travel further throughout the ancient
Speaker 1: and not so ancient world. In the meantime, we have
Speaker 1: to ask, while you're waging on part two, what benefits
Speaker 1: do you see these searches having for modern civilization? You know,
Speaker 1: some people, oddly enough, I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 1: but this surprised me. Some people have argued, in a
Speaker 1: very utilitarian way, we should just let the past die
Speaker 1: and focus on the future. Why spend hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: or millions of dollars finding these long gone, long neglected
Speaker 1: tombs when there are people starving, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: in the Middle World? Should we spend that money saving
Speaker 1: the people who are alive instead of finding the venerated
Speaker 1: corpses of people who have died.
Speaker 3: Or you know, spend it on sending us all the mars.
Speaker 1: There we go, There we go, in case Elon is
Speaker 1: tuning in, And secondly, do you think it's possible that
Speaker 1: someone alive today might know the location of one of
Speaker 1: these graves or some of these remains? And if so,
Speaker 1: why would they continue to keep it a secret?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And have you ever come across bones that are
Speaker 3: purportedly from Thomas Paine? We want to know about it.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your buttons.
Speaker 3: Don't send it to twenty three and meters I guess,
Speaker 3: but you know, maybe send it to one of the
Speaker 3: other ones. You think ancestry is clean so far.
Speaker 2: I think it's an inevitable situation.
Speaker 3: Well send it somewhere.
Speaker 1: I also don't think it's necessarily bad. I mean, what
Speaker 1: do you guys think?
Speaker 2: This is valuable stuff? And we have episodes about that.
Speaker 1: You can find them all on our website stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know, dot Com or wherever you
Speaker 1: find your favorite podcast, and you can send us the
Speaker 1: answers to those questions via. I mean, we're all over
Speaker 1: the social needs right, We're on Instagram, Facebook.
Speaker 3: Twitter, socialba ds, social needs.
Speaker 2: Yes, social needs als and I pas yes.
Speaker 3: As you said, conspiracy stuff on most conspiracy stuff show
Speaker 3: on Instagram. Uh, if you want to maybe, well, there's
Speaker 3: all those ways you can get a hold of us.
Speaker 3: Check out here's where it gets crazy. That's our fait
Speaker 3: one of our Facebook pages. It's our I guess more
Speaker 3: of our member group that you have to join. The
Speaker 3: only thing you have to know to get in is
Speaker 3: our names. And it is so surprising how many people
Speaker 3: get it so wrong when trying to join that page.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, Matt, but I really enjoy
Speaker 1: the thing is. Look, the question is, can you name
Speaker 1: the host of the show?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, then Matt Nole, super producer, Paul or Casey. Thanks
Speaker 1: for coming, by the way, Casey. We also just for
Speaker 1: peak behind the curtain. If we think the answer is
Speaker 1: funny enough, if we actually laugh, we'll be like, ah
Speaker 1: go come on let them in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: If we can tell it's an inside joke or something,
Speaker 3: they were like, okay, they know what's going on.
Speaker 2: What are some of the weird nicknames you guys saw?
Speaker 3: Mostly what I see is just strange pronunciations or writings
Speaker 3: of Nole's name, just really interesting.
Speaker 4: N O A L n O L E and you
Speaker 4: U L.
Speaker 2: I think I like that.
Speaker 4: That's a good one.
Speaker 2: There was also k n O W L.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, that's that's one of my favorite things I think.
Speaker 1: And so you can join the conversation with us, most
Speaker 1: importantly with your fellow listeners and we we we drop
Speaker 1: by there too.
Speaker 3: Yeah oh yeah. And if you don't want to do that,
Speaker 3: and that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 3: have any thought or questions about this episode, you can
Speaker 3: get into contact with us in a number of different ways.
Speaker 3: One of the best is to give us a call.
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Speaker 3: good old fashioned email.
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